[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 47 (Tuesday, April 26, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: April 26, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
      COMMEMORATING THE 79TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

                                 ______


                               SPEECH OF

                             HON. BOB CARR

                              of michigan

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, April 19, 1994

  Mr. CARR of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, April 24, 1994 marks the 79th 
anniversary of the Armenian genocide. From 1915 to 1923, the Ottoman 
Turkish Government conducted a systematic and deliberate campaign of 
genocide which resulted in the deaths of 1.5 million Armenian men, 
women and children. By 1923, nearly one third of the Armenian 
population had been murdered, and those who survived were exiled from 
the homeland which their ancestors had inhabited for over 3,000 years.
  Equally horrifying are the means by which the Ottoman Turkish 
Government pursued this deliberate mass elimination of the Armenian 
people. On April 24, 1915, Armenian intellectuals, religious leaders, 
and physicians were rounded up, exiled, and murdered. Only months 
later, the 250,000 Armenians serving in the Ottoman Army were disarmed 
and forced into labor battalions, where they were eventually either 
starved to death or executed. The women, children and elderly who 
remained were forced on death marches into the Syrian desert, along the 
way suffering rape, torture and mutilation. Yet only 20 years later, 
Adolf Hitler spoke these infamous words, in defense of his ``Final 
Solution'' for the Jews of Europe: ``Who today speaks of the 
extermination of the Armenians?''
  We do. And the retelling of this horrific episode in history sends a 
chilling reminder to us that we cannot ever stop speaking of the 
extermination of the Armenians, nor of the 6 million Jews who died in 
the Nazi Holocaust, nor of the millions of Russians murdered by Stalin, 
nor of the Cambodians massacred by Pol Pot. So long as the people of 
this world continue to discriminate against one another because of 
differences in race, religion, and ideology, the potential for such 
atrocities remains. We must not forget.

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